Photographing our Seas: Marine Birds and Conservation

While photographing the biodiversity in southern Africa's marine reserves, National Geographic photographer Thomas Peschak also captures the importance of balancing conservation efforts with the needs of locals in order to keep the reserves thriving.

The National Geographic Live series brings thought-provoking presentations by today’s leading explorers, scientists, photographers, and performing artists right to you. Each presentation is filmed in front of a live audience at National Geographic headquarters in Washington, D.C. New clips air every Monday.

Photographing our Seas: Marine Birds and Conservation

While photographing the biodiversity in southern Africa's marine reserves, National Geographic photographer Thomas Peschak also captures the importance of balancing conservation efforts with the needs of locals in order to keep the reserves thriving.

The National Geographic Live series brings thought-provoking presentations by today’s leading explorers, scientists, photographers, and performing artists right to you. Each presentation is filmed in front of a live audience at National Geographic headquarters in Washington, D.C. New clips air every Monday.

South Africa has one of the most sophisticated and extensive
networks of marine reserves on our planet. Home! My home. I get to go home. You
know, after ten years on the road and I was gone sometimes 300 days a year. I
got a bit tired of not being home. So, the next story that I proposed to National
Geographic was actually a story about my backyard. I wanted to actually tell
the story about our network of marine reserves.

Marine birds normally don't feature all that much when we
talk about marine reserves. However, this is what happens when they don't
feature in management. This is a picture that I took on slide from 2003. It's a
place called Malgas Island. And I went back there for the article last year and
this is what I found. Major decrease in nesting numbers because even though
this island is protected, the fishing grounds are not. The sardines and the
anchovies that these birds eat are overfished. So, a lot of these youngsters
die on the nest. There's a place called Mercury Island in Namibia. And this is
the centerpiece of the Namib Island Marine Reserve. And here for the first time,
people are trying to connect the nesting grounds and the feeding grounds of
these birds together. Mercury Island has stable population of Cape Gannets. You
know, Bank Cormorants the most endangered marine bird in Africa stable
population, only place. Penguins, African Penguins. They can't fly, so what happens
is they can only swim a certain amount of distance before they have to go back
and feed their chicks. So, they are the first ones to abandon and starve.

Here... these guys are not starving, are they? Penguins
heading out to sea. You know, this looks like a really calm and beautiful
scene. It's, you know, sunny and it's just this sort of an idyllic place and
this is what it looks like when you're trying to take this picture. Water is
about five degrees and you're in this rock pool and you're surrounded by massive
Atlantic Ocean waves. Assistant: “We got a big one!” There's my assistant
warning me there's a big wave coming. So, I swim away from the picture, trying
to save myself. Assistant: “Okay. False alarm.” So I just try to swim back
again and this goes on for hours. And then he misses the flipping wave. And
here come the penguins. I'm going, “What's going... you're supposed to be
there.” It's a little bit dangerous there because if you get washed out to sea,
you're done! There's another wave coming, I'm shooting and again...

Anyway, you know most marine reserves in Africa were
actually they work great for bio-diversity. Except they were imposed on the
local communities. And so, even though, you know, they... you know,
biologically and scientifically they're amazing, most local people do not benefit
from these reserves. Thus there's, you know, high levels of poaching and
there's actually a danger of these reserves being opened up to fishing, because
they serve no benefit to the local people who live next to them. And, a
developing country like South Africa you kind of have to marry the needs of bio-diversity
and people if you want to have any chance of being sustainable. So, I was
looking for a few examples where people and bio-diversity coexisted together...
you know, happily. This is Ponta on the Mozambique-South African border. This
is the only marine national park in Africa. And here, both sides of the border
are protected and these dolphins spend half their lives in Mozambique, and half
their life in South Africa. And now, because of this new arrangement of
conservation their entire habitat is protected. But the reason I went there is
because they have a really interesting perspective on how they integrate people
into the marine environment. The rangers instead of, you know, doing
anti-poaching patrols and arresting people, they built a school. And they're
teaching kids. The philosophy there is we first have to give the local
residents a benefit and the benefit here is education. And this is a little
video of them learning Portuguese. They also hold immunization clinic and a
nurse comes out once a month. The adults love this service. Kids not so much. This
little guy was not a happy chap, but again you know, this is one of those great
examples where, you know, before enforcing regulation they wanted to give the community
benefits.

Further north in Mozambique, you know, Vamizi Island again
an interesting case-study where you have a luxury resort and a fishing community
on one island and together they agree to protect half of their coral reef from
all fishing and for last ten years. And now the fishermen, the reserve is so
good it's actually exporting fish biomass into the fishing zones on the outside
And now these guys are having a better catch than ever before. So, again, you
know, there are ways to marry bio-diversity and people. And this is what has to
happen in South Africa if these reserves are gonna have any hope in surviving over
the next five or ten years.

To end this evening I want to kind of go back right to the
beginning. This was one of my favorite books as a child. Under the Red Sea by
Dr. Prof. Hans Hass. He was an Austrian diving pioneer and biologist. And you
know, one of my biggest wishes as a kid was to sort of, you know, be in one of you
know, in the situations that he found himself. And, you know, putting this
presentation together I came across this image, and I went, “Sheesh. I've
already had those experiences.” So, you know, full circle, you know 12 years
later and... thank you all so much for coming.

Photographing our Seas: Marine Birds and Conservation

While photographing the biodiversity in southern Africa's marine reserves, National Geographic photographer Thomas Peschak also captures the importance of balancing conservation efforts with the needs of locals in order to keep the reserves thriving.

The National Geographic Live series brings thought-provoking presentations by today’s leading explorers, scientists, photographers, and performing artists right to you. Each presentation is filmed in front of a live audience at National Geographic headquarters in Washington, D.C. New clips air every Monday.